


Sins Of The Father | Part One

by CantSpeakFae



Series: Once More With Glitter [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Buffy just wants a night off, F/M, Fluff to begin with, Honestly I'm the reason we can't have nice things, I have a lot of feelings about characters who never got any screen time, Jenny and Giles are adorable, Jenny offers Giles her coffee and if that's not love what is, Plans for date night gone horribly awry, Rupert Giles' father is abusive, Scoobies gonna scoob, With angst peppered in at the end, btvs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 15:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15844041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CantSpeakFae/pseuds/CantSpeakFae
Summary: While Randall's life is abruptly changing back in London, Rupert's left in the dark with only the vague memories of haunting dreams to give him the sense that something is amiss... and the chance to have that sense knocked out of him. You should never spar with Buffy while distracted.But he's about to get so much worse than a blow to the shoulder when a surprise visitor comes bearing what can only be bad news.





	Sins Of The Father | Part One

“GILES!”

Buffy cries out as she pulls her punch just enough to keep from knocking out her Watcher, who seemed to be doing anything  _ but _ watching. She still lands the blow on his shoulder, despite her best efforts, and watches with horror as he spins around and falls to the floor with a dull thud, grimacing in pain before he’s even quite settled on the floor.

Giles groans as he rolls over onto his back. His shoulder feels like it was hit by a lorrie.  

_ Good show, Buffy.  _ _ Poorly played, Giles. _ __   
  
He knows better than to “spar” with Buffy whilst distracted, but bits and flashes of his dream keep swimming to the forefront of his mind, and he can't quite seem to shake them.

“...Ow.”

“Ohmigod, Giles, are you okay? I'm so sorry!” 

  
Buffy scrambles to kneel beside her Watcher, ready to help him sit up the moment he shows any inclination to do so. Her face is drawn with worry and guilt. 

“No, not at all...this was -” Giles grunts as he slowly sits up. “- entirely my fault. I'm...well, I'm rather afraid my head's, er, not in the game, today.”

Buffy helps him to his feet and gently pushes him over to a chair by the central table, pursing her lips and still looking for a way to undo her mistake.    
  
“Can I get you some water...or tea? I can cook tea!” 

Giles shudders at the memory of the last time Buffy prepared a cuppa for him.  How can a girl be so capable of so many things, yet still manage to…  _ burn  _ water?*   
  
“I'll be fine, Buffy, please. No need to make a fuss.”

“...If you say so…”   
  
Buffy looks unconvinced, but she sits across the table and pulls out her compact from her bookbag. She freshens up her makeup and reties her ponytail, glancing in the small mirror until she's satisfied with what she sees. And, since Giles isn’t interested in being coddled in the aftermath of the failed sparring, she doesn’t see any harm in slipping in a little of the question she’d been meaning to ask him since  _ before _ she’d nearly killed him.   
  
“So.” She starts, hedging a little. “...Xander and Willow should be here any minute. I'm studying with Willow after dinner, tonight, and I'll patrol with Angel after that, so… can I skip training after school, today?”

Before Giles could open his mouth and answer, the doors of the library burst open. The scoobies. Always on cue. 

“Hey, Buff...what's the sitch? You and G-man get a little too carried away in your argument over what qualifies as real music?” 

Always one to roll with the comedic timing, Xander comes strolling into the library right on cue and balancing a small box of donuts: a tasty, after training snack/breakfast food for the four of them to share before it's time to slog off to boring classes all day. His eyebrows raise at the sight of Giles sitting back with a wince and Buffy nervously fluttering around him, though, and he can't help the first joke that comes out of his mouth.   
  
And, ah, okay, he's a little shaky with the quips this morning. Not his best. But he hasn't slept that well this week - what, with all the creepy beasties and ghoulies that have them running all over Sunnydale - and coffee was a no-go. He was already running late and Tony Harris was threatening him with a pair of gardening shears by the time he managed to run out the door. Doesn't exactly put you in the mood for a Starbucks run. But doesn't he get points for effort?

“I'm telling you, you're both wrong. Now, why don't we end this silly feud and agree to disagree? Tell 'em. Will.”   
  
He rounds on Willow for support, smiling his best you-know-you-love-me smile.

“Xander…”  

Willow quietly admonishes him for making light of Giles making pain-face and rescues the box of donuts from Xander's hold, carrying them over to the table and setting them down for easy grabbage by all hands. Her gaze darts between Buffy and Giles, unsure if she should offer to help or just keep her hands to herself. Giles could be so testy after a few well-aimed or accidental blows.

She presses her lips into a concerned frown and opts for the keeping her hands to herself part of events. She's not much much for the taking care of people, anyway. Applying band-aids is the start and end of her first-aid knowledge.   
  
“Training get out of hand, again?”

“Ah, not terribly much. I zigged when I should have, we, zagged...ooh, a jelly!” Giles' weary tone pulls a hard 180 at the sight of his favourite American carbohydrate, and he grabs it out of the box before the children take it by accident. He continues, slightly muffled, and lightly spewing a small cloud of powdered sugar onto his waistcoat.* “I'll be fine, eventually.”   
  
He swallows and continues on more clearly.   
  
“But not in time to do it all again this afternoon, so…”   
  
He gives Buffy a meaningful smile as he reaches for a napkin.

“So...no more training this afternoon! Thanks, Giles, you're the best!” 

“Ooh! Buffy! That means we'll have time to study for the French test...or, you know, do something fun and completely non-school related because I'm capable of thinking about other things, too. We could go to the park and feed ducks. Or vandalize something like regular teenagers. I could tag a sidewalk with chalk. I'm a rebel.”  Willow says, quickly changing her tune when she sees Buffy's face falling at the mention of studying. 

“So, it's either studying or vandalism? You kids really don't like to settle for lukewarm activities, do you?”    
  
Jenny steps into the library, just in time to catch Willow's stammered out list of plans for Buffy's day off, balancing a stack of papers in one hand and a coffee cup in the other. It had seemed like such a good idea, at the time, to instruct her particularly unruly class to write up a code, by  _ hand _ , but now as she'd have to go through every line and grade it...well, coffee had gone from a perk of the teacher's lounge to a necessity.    
  
A badly burned tasting necessity.    
  
Her gaze flicks to Rupert, and a soft smile overtakes her previous grimace...at least, until she sees him wincing in pain and she becomes the third person in the last ten minutes to flick her gaze back to Buffy, questioningly.   
  
“...Training got out of hand, again?”

“Giles zigged when I zagged...I've been absolved of the blame, and relieved from duty, so.”

Buffy grabs a cruller and her friends and books it from the Library before Giles can change his mind, leaving the two of them staring at the near-visible dust cloud left in their wake. Jenny shifted her gaze to Rupert, raising her eyebrows at the sudden privacy. 

“She's...not incorrect. I really must pay better attention…” Giles self-consciously brushes powdered sugar from his chest, blissfully unaware of the swipe of sugar just to the left of his lower lip. ‘Is there something you need? I mean, rather, can I assist you in some way? I mean…” 

He could slap himself for being such a blathering fool.   
  
“...I mean, good morning, Jenny. It's lovely to see you. Donut?”

Jenny slowly sets her coffee cup and stack of papers onto the table, next to the box of donuts, her lips pursing into a considering pout as she looks back at him. He's not usually this flustered - not even around her and, as Buffy had once so eloquently put it, he has the "hots" for her - or this distracted. The few times she's seen him like this, there was always a threat looming on the horizon. An apocalypse or a villain threatening Sunnydale's already precariously balanced way of life and she wracks her brains, trying to remember if anyone's sent her news of anything that spells a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e like cats giving birth to snakes or chicken eggs hatching toads. But nothing comes to mind.   
  
“Rupert, what's happening?”    
  
She presses on, looking for signs of bad news. The slumping of his shoulders or him pulling his glasses off to clean them so he doesn't have to look at her as he explains yet another unfortunate situation just on the horizon. And, just because she can't resist, she lightly brushes her fingers against his face, wiping away the dusting of sugar just to the left of his lower, grimacing lip.   
  
“The kids aren't here. You can talk to me.”

He flashes her an embarrassed, little smile as she wipes either sugar or jelly from his face. Even without the children present, he can't imagine discussing his dream of the previous night with anybody. He's spent 15 years putting those thoughts, that memory, away locked up in a tiny box in the vast storeroom of his mind. So what if a peak pops out every now and again? Speaking the...dream, out loud, only lends credence to it, makes it more solid...more real. That's the opposite of what he wants.   
  
He shrugs and wolf's down the remainder of his doughnut.

“I didn’t sleep well, is all.” 

“Oh. Well, if that's all -”   
  
She doesn't believe that it is. She hasn't known him long, but Rupert has never struck her as a very layered man. He’s an honest man, not someone who has too many more secrets than what she's already in on. He's always been upfront with who he is...and she admires that about, even if some of who he is is exasperatingly endearing. Like the technophobia or the refusal to admit when something is wrong.    
  
It all comes out eventually, though, one way or the other. She just hopes it's not another prophecy.    
  
“- then I have the perfect solution.”   
  
She reaches for her coffee cup and hands it over to him. A true testament to how much she must really like him, she realizes, as she does it. There’s no one else in the world she’d relinquish her own caffeine fix to.    
  
“Fresh from the teacher's lounge and loaded with caffeine. You'll be tense, I know, but at least you'll be tense and awake which might help you avoid... what did Buffy say? "Zigged when you should have zagged"?”

Giles’ eyes open wide at the offering. It's not the coffee, per se, which he wouldn't touch without protective gear, let alone consume. It's the meaning behind the act. The sacrifice. He understands the significance, and it touches him deeply.   
  
He stands and gently returns the cup to her graceful hand, and gives her a small smile. He might be standing just a hair too close, but he doesn't step back.   
  
“Thank you, Jenny, for the gesture. I truly appreciate it...I'll be fine with a pot of tea, and an evening to recover.”

Jenny laughs, softly, setting the cup back aside and reaching up to straighten his already impeccable tie because she can't fight the urge to have her hands on him and can't think of a better excuse for it.   
  
“Evening to recover...I guess that nixes all of my date ideas. With Buffy getting the day off, and all, I guess that makes you free too. Darn, I really thought you'd like riding a roller coaster or drag racing through the streets of Sunnydale.” 

She teases, gently, relying on humour to counteract how her heart races when he stands this close. Part of her knows better than to let herself get swept up in this - this - whatever  _ this _ is, but the rest of her doesn't care.   
  
Her expression softens, her tone turning serious.   
  
“Why  _ don’t _ you come over, tonight? We can watch American Movies and argue about whether or not they're terrible. Could be fun.” 

Giles hopes the irritatingly dim lights of the Library hide the flush he feels warming his cheeks as she straightens his tie.   
  
“As much as I do adore being thrust at high speed against the laws of physics in a metal contraption built by low-wage, workers of questionable sobriety and run by sullen teenagers of even more questionable sobriety...the idea of a movie night at home sounds rather blissful… But only if I may provide dinner - Chinese takeaway, alright, or would you prefer Indian?”

“I could go for some Chinese.” 

She  _ does _ see the flush in his cheeks and it puts a satisfied smile on her lips as she lowers her hands back away from him before she acts on any insane impulse to pull him down and kiss the breath out of him. It's a wonder that she managed to get him to say yes with a minimal amount of stammering. Maybe he's finally starting to warm up to her and the new age way of thinking?   
  
She grins wider at the thought.

“So… my place? Say, around seven? I do have some grading to do but I should have given up totally by them.” 

Giles chuckles softly.   
  
“A benefit of being a lowly librarian, I suppose, is the lack of things requiring grading.”   
  
A thought occurs to him, despite being off topic.   
  
“Do you prefer spicy or mild? Er, for the take out…” 

 

***

 

Ronald regards the faces in the halls that he passes by with distaste, drawing into himself as they push and shove on their way to classes without a care. No real structure. No order. No /fear/. It's disturbing. Exactly the sort of place he dreaded that his son would end up getting his education from. A place where they'd be too afraid of of caning an out of line child.    
  
Of course, he'd sent his son to the best, and look how  _ he’d  _ turned out.    
  
His dark mood blackening further, he turns the corner until he finds what he was looking for. The doors to the library; Quentin said that Rupert had established himself as a "worker" in this school. Not the worst cover, sure...but for the Slayer to still be involved in such mundane rituals. Bah.    
  
He pushes through the door, not surprised to find that there are no students in sight... though, he  _ is  _ surprised to see his son, standing so close to some woman and blushing like an idiot.   
  
“...Rupert.”    
  
He calls, from the doorway, his gaze flicking from him to the woman's face. He knows his son wasn't expecting him and he's quite glad that he wasn't.  _ This _ is how he spends his downtime? Will he ever stop being a disappointment?   
  
“Is this a bad time.”    
  
There's a hint of danger in his tone. Things are worse here than he thought.

Giles flinches at the sound of the familiar voice, instinctively stepping away from Jenny. He pulls off his glasses and polishes them with his crisp, white handkerchief to occupy his otherwise trembling hands.   
  
_ Is this a bad time?  _   
  
“For you, father?”

  
**_Always._ **

  
“Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> Work credit: 
> 
> Jenny, Xander, Willow, and Ronald's lines and action were written by me. 
> 
> Buffy and Giles were written by my girlfriend.


End file.
